TB said
"I've heard rumours that during WW2, student pilots would get about 5 hours in a Tiger Moth & then would be sent straight out in a Spitfire. "
Sounds like a certain way to write off a Spitfire to me - and a pilot ;~)
I thought they did a bit on a Harvard or something similar before the front line fighter. But either way they were woefully undertrained and many, I'm sure, were killed by their own aeroplanes rather than by enemy action.
SSD